What the #!%* will happen on May 3?

In this occasional feature, the National Post tells you everything you need to know about a complicated issue. Today: Kathryn Blaze Carlson examines various post-election scenarios.

Q. The polls suggest Conservative leader Stephen Harper will get a minority. What would happen then?A. Mr. Harper would get first crack at governing. He would appoint a cabinet and convene Parliament. In all likelihood, he would introduce a Speech from the Throne, which is followed by a vote. That would determine whether he has the confidence of the House of Commons, said Ned Franks, a parliamentary expert at Queen’s University. If he is defeated, Mr. Harper would visit Governor General David Johnston and either resign or ask that Parliament be dissolved for another election. At that point, the GG would approach the leaders of other parties, first and foremost Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, to see if he could glean the confidence of the House — whether via an agreement or an official coalition.

Q. Does the Governor General have to do what the prime minister asks?A. No. “The Governor General does not have to take the prime minister’s advice,” said Harold Jansen, an associate professor of political science at the University of Lethbridge. Mr. Franks said the GG could exercise his “reserve powers of the Crown, and say, ‘No way, Jose’” to Mr. Harper’s request that Parliament be dissolved for yet another election.

Q. What would it take to convince the Governor General that another party or pair of parties should get a chance to govern?A. “The Governor General would probably want the assurance that the Liberals would have the confidence of the House for a period of 18 months to two years,” Mr. Franks said. “A non-defeat deal, covering a decent length of time, would likely be enough.” A non-defeat deal could be likened to a non-compete clause in business — the NDP and, if necessary, the Bloc, would agree not to challenge Mr. Ignatieff’s reign for a certain period of time. If Mr. Johnston cannot get that assurance, then he is “perfectly entitled” to grant Mr. Harper’s request for dissolution.

Q: Any guesses on what David Johnston is thinking?A: He offered the following thoughts in an interview in December, 2010, while discussing the challenges facing countries with minority governments: “I think that most jurisdictions that have a system of first-past-the-post or proportional representation will, from time to time, have coalitions or amalgamation of different parties and that’s the way democracy sorts itself out.” He’s known to be reading dusty volumes, consulting experts and otherwise deepening his knowledge of Canada’s constitutional monarchy, its parliamentary roots and traditions and — of course — the sometimes pivotal role of the Governor General in the transfer of political power.

Q. How long could Mr. Harper theoretically wait before facing Parliament after the election?A. “I find that question frightening,” Mr. Franks said. He described the 1979 election, when incoming prime minister Joe Clark waited 140 days before facing Parliament after the election. “Clark sat around for the whole summer, thinking about what he was going to do when he got into power,” Mr. Franks recalled. The average number of days between the election and the first sitting of the new Parliament is 77 days, Mr. Franks said, adding that Jean Chrétien waited far longer — 112 days — in 1997. In theory, he said Mr. Harper has until one year from the last day that Parliament sat before the election was called, which would be late March, 2012. Prof. Jansen said while that is technically true, he pointed out that the government has yet to pass a budget — the Tories were felled before passing their economic document. “I think the government would want to get on that pretty quick,” he said.

Q. What’s the difference between a coalition and an agreement?A. A coalition involves two or more parties agreeing to jointly form the government, meaning they would all have representation in Cabinet. An agreement is “less intimate and less bonded” than a coalition, in that only one party forms the government and appoints Cabinet ministers, explained Myer Siemiatycki, a politics professor at Ryerson University. That sort of agreement is like an accord, where one or two smaller parties agree to support a larger party for a period of time in exchange for some concessions. In the infamous 2008 scenario, the Liberals and NDP would have formed a coalition with the support of the Bloc Québécois, who attached certain policy demands to their cooperation.

Q. Is there a precedent for either arrangement?A. In Ontario in 1985, the Conservatives won a minority, so Tory leader Frank Miller got first crack and delivered a Speech from the Throne, Prof. Jansen recalled. His government was defeated, and the Lieutenant-Governor asked Liberal leader David Peterson whether he could form the government. The answer was ‘yes,’ because the Bob Rae-led NDP agreed to support a Liberal minority government for two years. A coalition, meantime, is “very, very rare” in Canada, Prof. Jansen said, adding that the most recent example he recalls was in 1999 in Saskatchewan, when the Liberals and the NDP partnered to lead the province.

Q. Would the Bloc necessarily have to be involved in a Liberal-NDP coalition or agreement?A. That all depends on numbers. If the Liberals and the NDP combined have more seats than the Conservatives, then Bloc support is unnecessary. If they do not, then the Bloc would be called upon to offer its support for a Liberal-led minority or coalition government. “There’s really no way that the Bloc would end up part of a coalition, though,” Prof. Jansen said.

Q. Is there some particular threshold of seats that would legitimize an agreement between the Liberal and the NDP in the eyes of Canadians?A. There is no quota per se. However, “it would complicate things if the party that is going to form the government has a really low threshold of seats,” Prof. Siemiatycki said. While a coalition is constitutionally legitimate, Prof. Jansen said political legitimacy is tougher to judge. “I think if the gap between the Conservatives and the Liberals is big enough, then it could be tricky,” he said. He added that a Liberal-led government would be less controversial if the party only needed NDP support, and did not have to lean on the separatist party.

Q. How might Canadians react to a Liberal-led minority, backed by the NDP and, if necessary, the Bloc?A. Prof. Siemiatycki said Canadians will be divided on this. “Some Canadians will think, ‘How can you have a prime minister who won, say, less than a third of the seats?’” he said. “Others might say, ‘This is our fourth consecutive election where we wound up with a minority government, and maybe we need to experiment with some different modes of governing.’” Prof. Siemiatycki said it is important to remember that Mr. Harper may have won the most seats in the last election, but the Liberals and the NDP together gleaned more votes than the Tories.

Q. Does all this talk about coalitions and agreements detract from Mr. Harper’s argument that it would be illegitimate, because Canadians know exactly what they might be voting for on Election Day?A. Prof. Jansen thinks so, at least to some degree. “Part of the problem in 2008 was that the Liberals and the NDP did not talk at all about a coalition,” he said. “They spent five weeks beating up on each other, and then three weeks later wanted to sit around a Cabinet table together.” This time around, Mr. Ignatieff has said he is open to the idea that he could get less seats than Mr. Harper and still form a government. “I don’t think anyone could claim they didn’t know it was a possibility,” he said. However, he said a coalition government would likely be ill-received by Canadians, as Mr. Ignatieff has repeatedly denied that he would enter such an arrangement.

Q. If Mr. Harper loses the confidence of the House and is forced to visit the Governor General, which door would he use to access Rideau Hall?A. The prime minister is most likely to enter the historic building via the unassuming Ambassador’s Door — a small, white, wooden door atop a bannistered stair case at the side of the building. “When he has private meetings here with the Governor General, that’s the door he uses,” said Rideau Hall spokesperson Marie-Ève Létourneau. “However, for the dissolution of Parliament, he chose to enter through the front facade. That’s his choice.” She said the Ambassador’s Door is primarily reserved for the prime minister, although it was recently used by others because the front facade was under construction. Ms. Létourneau said the Ambassador’s Door — which is at the end of a treed footpath between the administration door and the Princess Anne entrance — is kept locked, and that someone is sent to greet the prime minister upon his announced arrival.